I saw Gone Girl over the weekend! I was really excited to see it because I loved the book, and I like a lot of David Fincher's movies, so I knew it would be a really great adaptation. I kind of envy people who hadn't read the book before seeing it, because the twist in the middle is pretty crazy. I know when I was reading it, I was like, whoa, this just got a lot more interesting! And then after that, I couldn't put it down. The 'unreliable narrator' thing probably comes across better in the book, perhaps, but it's still pretty cool in the movie when you find out what's really happened.
The first part of the story seems like a typical scenario that we've seen played out too many times in the news (especially in today's world of 24 hour sensationalist news) - a wife (Amy, played masterfully by Rosamund Pike) goes missing, and her husband (Nick, a very well cast Ben Affleck) is the suspected murderer. Everything seems to point in that direction, from their money woes and growing emotional distance, to his infidelity. Halfway through, however (SPOILER ALERT!), we find out that Amy has masterminded the whole thing - every last shred of evidence was meant to make it seem like Nick murdered her. Even her diary entries, which to this point have framed much of the narrative and led you, and the investigators of the case, to believe that he had to have done it.
I think everyone is probably quick to label Amy as a crazy psycho bitch, which, sure she is. More than that, though, she is a sociopath, which is a type of crazy that I find particularly fascinating. Cold and calculating, and both emotionless and full of emotion, and like a force of evil or of nature, one can be virtually powerless to stop them. They don't need a reason to try to destroy your life, although Amy feels like she has one, which is basically like, how dare Nick not continue to be the charming man she had a rom-com meet-cute with. Instead of, you know, communicating with him about how to improve their marriage, why not frame him for her murder to get his attention instead? A lot of reviews I read about the movie talked about how it was about the difficulties of relationships and marriage. I can't say that I've ever wanted to fake murder myself and frame my boyfriend for it, but maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Anyway, Gone Girl is really great, and probably on my top ten list of 2014 so far. If you liked the movie at all, definitely read the book too!
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